Turn in your copy of the scriptures to John chapter eight. We’ll read verse 44, which I think when we get there, you’ll see it’s a very familiar passage. And then we’ll also look at Romans chapter one, verses 28 to 30. So in addition to all of those Proverbs, we read about not lying and not bearing false witness. We add the root and the source of false words by reading John 8 44 and Jesus who was winning friends and influences people Says to his enemies you are of your father the devil and your will is to do your father’s desires he was a murderer from the beginning and has nothing to do with the truth because there is no truth in him and When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of all lies. And then over to Romans chapter one, verses 28 to 30, Paul is speaking of the wrath of God coming against mankind for their wicked ways, their evil deeds. And he’s speaking of unregenerate people. And in Romans 1 28, he says, And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not be done.
They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them. Amen. This is God’s gracious word.
I was thinking through the 10 commandments And, you know, some of them are private. We’ll get to coveting next week. And, you know, I think people can see when we’re coveting something. We talk about being green with envy and, you know, maybe we turn the color of the Incredible Hulk and everybody knows. I don’t know. You know, we talked about lust and adultery. We talked about anger and some of those things we can hide under our outward appearance. you know we can say bless your heart as a southerner and you know it really doesn’t mean bless your heart if you know what I mean but we hide behind our niceties and whatever but our mouth is a different story perhaps you have experienced the open mouth and insert foot we do it often.
We do it too often. We usually don’t learn from our mistakes. And you know, there’s the proverbial things you don’t say. You don’t walk up to a woman, for example, and say, when are you due? That could get you in big trouble. You know, you’ve done it, right? You know you shouldn’t. But I’ve never done that. But we say things and we can’t reel those words back in.
You know, there’s the story from a while back, it’s always a good one to think about with our words, the person reckless with their tongue really did some damage to another and so they came to that person and asked know for their forgiveness I’m really sorry what I said I shouldn’t have said it it was wrong and the person said of course I forgive you but the older teaching the younger said let me show you a lesson and the story goes something like this they they went up to the top of a building and that older person tore into a feather pillow, maybe a goose down pillow, cut it open and let the feathers fly and told that person that had come to apologize. Now go and collect them all. Of course, the wind had carried them this way and that way, and it was impossible. And the object lesson there was to be reminded, to be challenged that our words very often cannot be retrieved.
And now we live in the electronic age. We live in the electronic age where we have a profile and we run our mouths on social media and the whole world can see that we have a tongue of poison through the keystrokes or the strokes of the thumb on our little gadget.
And so watching our mouths, guarding our tongues, keeping others’ names and reputations is something we ought to think about very seriously in light of our hearts, in light of God’s judgment, but also in light of the technology that is out there that is available. I’m sure you’ve thought of all the commandments and probably the ones you’re most worried about are the ones that others see perhaps you have trouble with or struggle with. But we should be reminded God sees them all.
He sees our hearts. He sees our thoughts. He sees our words. He sees our deeds. And certainly we live life before others. And so we want to take a few moments to think about this and to be careful to take care in what we say, whether it’s with our lips or it’s with keystrokes.
So the question for the ninth commandment is what is God’s will? And of course, the Heidelberg Catechism is very clear. I never give false testimony. We sometimes say the ninth commandment is you shall not lie. And that is true. Lying is included, but there’s a human aspect in bearing false witness. Remember the scriptures talk about, let the person be accused by two or three witnesses. Remember the apostle Paul tells Timothy, I believe it is, that no one should entertain charges against an officer of the church unless those witnesses are plural and serious. It is a terrible thing.
A couple years ago, gosh, it’s been seven or eight years ago, we were in DC, probably it was 2019, we were up for one of my brother’s kids’ first birthdays or something, and we were staying in the Capitol Hill area, and it was during the time of the Kavanaugh hearings. Remember, I think during Trump’s first term, he got to nominate several Supreme Court justices, and Judge Kavanaugh was perhaps one of the most controversial. And all over DC, you could both feel the angst and you could see the graffiti. There were posters everywhere, pasted on every telephone pole imaginable.
And I think if I remember correctly, they said Kavanaugh, no. But much like Clarence Thomas in the 1990s, there was a smear campaign. I was trying to recollect some of the details, and so I typed into Google this week. I said, what was the smear campaign on Justice Clarence Thomas? In 1991, I was 14, so I remember it, but, you know, no details.
And, of course, Google corrected me. You know, you’re using language that is rather divisive. And so I got politically correct Google telling me, so I asked, I said, well, did anybody ever prove it? Well, you can just hear Google backtracking. Not formally, you know. But we live in a time where the court of public opinion is what matters. And the louder they are and the more viral they are, you’re cooked.
Just this week we saw a mistrial in the court case in Massachusetts where the lady had strangled her three children. not a laughing matter in any way, shape or form considering what she had been through mentally, what she had been through and what she’s done and can’t fix. And then also I believe she tried to take her own life and is now paralyzed and in a wheelchair. The Babylon Bee had a headline that said something like nation or no jury still trying to figure out if strangling your three kids is wrong. But what had the court of public opinion decided?
I guess much like the Mangione character, who is now a hero for murdering the insurance company CEO, this lady is now everybody’s hero. And it even made its way into the LSU Clemson. College game day yesterday, watching college game day yesterday morning, there was a sign behind the ESPN commentators And it said, Lane Kiffin loves whatever Clancy, whatever, Lindsay Clancy, something like that. And so it becomes a popular level thing to believe this or that.
And so these words tonight, this challenge for us tonight is to maintain the truth, love the truth. Don’t pile on with tailbears. And so it says that I never give false witness against anyone. We want to uphold everyone’s name and good reputation. We don’t want to twist another’s words. You know that game you play when you’re in youth group where everybody sits in a circle, somebody whispers something in the first person’s ear and everybody whispers it around and you wanna see what they come up with by the end. Well, how quickly do we recycle stories? How quickly do we embellish? How quickly do we add and subtract and withhold? And our brains and our emotions really make the story rather wonderful by the time we’re finished telling it. But we’re to twist no one’s words. We are not to gossip, which simply means sharing personal information about others. We’re not to be idle or curious. or to try to be in the know, sometimes there’s information that others know and you don’t know and you just need to leave it at that.
We don’t slander, slander is the use of false language intended to do damage. Libel is spoken slander, I suppose you could say. Slander is, well, slander is often spoken, libel is often written. And so we’ve gotta be careful with our words. We see lawsuits flying around because people are loose with their tongues. And we need to be careful to not join in condemning anyone rashly or without a hearing.
I think I told one of the groups in the church recently of seeing a report on the news where during some of the big storms lately. A family pulled in under an awning at a local country club, not local to us, but somewhere in the triad. They pulled their car in under a covering at a golf course at a country club and they were taking shelter in their car under that portico. And so sometime after the storm had let down a little bit, The club manager came out and asked, could you go ahead and move your car? We need the lane open for emergency vehicles, but also our members are ready since the storm is over to leave. Well, it went viral on social media that the club manager said something like, you need to move your car now out into the storm and out into harm’s way.
And all these people piled on, what a horrible club. What a horrible club manager. You know, what person wouldn’t? I mean, they were nowhere near this event. And isn’t that the wild thing where you see people, they just have to weigh in. They have to barge in and say, oh, I was an eyewitness. I know exactly what was going on. I’m going to throw my weight in it. It’s bearing false witness. It hurts people’s reputations. It’s a very difficult thing. So we have to be careful about joining in, piling on, acting rashly and without a hearing.
What is the right that we have in the United States? We are innocent. until proven guilty. But boy, there are some accusations, whether they are true or not, they will stick with you. They will last. And people will pile on. I knew it. I figured it’s got to be true because they just named it. But we are encouraged here. We are motivated here by this wonderful statement. We should avoid, under penalty, of God’s wrath. So if we damage someone’s name, if we damage someone’s reputation under penalty of God’s wrath, every bit of lying, every bit of deceit, which is a work of the devil will be punished by God. Now I know some of you have probably in your lifetime had your good name slandered. People have gossiped about you. People have said things about you that were not true. I’ve been there, I’ve been there in ministry before.
You know, there’s no hurt like church hurt. And a couple of pieces of advice I was given as a pastor, but I think it’s true across other places, is you have to outlive your critics. Over time, they will waste so much energy making sure you slip up so that you do commit the crime they’ve already accused you of. The other piece of advice that I was given is there’s no revenge like good living. There’s no better revenge than what people have said about you than just a life well lived. You can outlive your critics and you can, in a sense, get revenge.
Several years ago, many years ago, I was involved in a church split where the elders and I had to stand up to the other minister and it did not go well. It did not go well at any level at all. Uh, the Lord left us in that town for 18 months. I was no longer the minister.
Uh, but we were there and we lived in our house and it was like the Lord going before us. There were people that hated my guts. They hated my children’s guts, even though they were like two years old. Uh, but it was like the Lord went before us and sent the terror through the town. Uh, no one, no one that we didn’t want to bump into. Uh, we, we didn’t bump into them. The Lord seemed to protect us.
But I remember about a year in, we went to a piano recital or something that was rather public. And it was back at that church. We went in and we sat down and our girls played the piano. And people were looking at us because there were some from the church who had stayed, some who had left. And people were looking at us like, how are they happy? How are they alive? How are they smiling? and you outlive your critics. People think the worst things about you.
But on our side, we should, as far as we can, avoid, under penalty of God’s wrath, every kind of lying and deceit. I’m very glad not to work in the public business world. I’m very glad not to have office politics. Very happy not to be competing with others to climb a ladder from all I’ve heard, it’s a rather cutthroat workforce, work world, and people will stab you in the back and they will step right over you to climb to the next position. And so I know we face these things at every turn, both as recipients, but we can’t help that, but we should never be participants.
And I love how the Heidelberg uses what we read from John chapter eight, if you tell a lie, You’re doing the devil’s work. I mean, boy, we need Freeman here tonight, don’t we? I can just hear Freeman from the back row, that devil, he’s the liar. And it is so true.
There is life that comes from God, and there is death that comes from Satan. There is truth that comes from God, and there is only lies that come from the devil. And so in addition to fearing, the judgment of God, we should all take care not to partner with the devil, not to be a willing participant in his work, in his business. Years and years and years ago, before I was a minister, I was in a church just as a member where a pretty large section of the congregation did not like the pastor, and I’ll just say, and I’m saying this from my perspective, had pretty good reason not to like him.
He had come and done some really boneheaded things. I’ll tell you about it after the service if you’ll stay. No, I can’t, I shouldn’t do that. I think I’ve told a story or two. But anyway, he gets up one Sunday, because he’s sick and tired of being talked about, and he went to somewhere in the Old Testament where it talks about the sons of Belial, the sons of the devil. And he pretty much proceeded during a sermon to call everybody in the church, uh, sons of Bilal. Now it’s one thing for Jesus to get away with that. You can say you’re all the devil’s children, uh, but this guy did it.
And I don’t think he got a Sunday lunch invitation that day, uh, from, from anyone in the church. Uh, uh, and he may have been right, uh, to, to say a little something, but, um, yeah, anyway, that was rather interesting. But how about the matter of court? I narrowly escaped jury duty this summer, but I did have it about three years ago.
And I remember going in and sitting in the room, and everybody’s watching movies on their phone. That’s going to go well. But they made us swear in, and they had a stack of Bibles, and you could swear on a Bible you could pick. But they said, you know, you don’t have to swear on a Bible if it’s against your religion. And of course my mind was thinking, this is America, you know, we’re based on the word, probably should make people swear on the Bible, whatever, anyway.
But what happens when we don’t maintain truth? What happens to a society when lies can flourish? What happens to a culture? What happens to a judicial system? What happens to a business world when a handshake means nothing, a vowel means nothing? What happens when our word is no good? Well, things fall apart and, uh, it’s not a trustworthy world.
And so in court and everyone else everywhere else, uh, the Bible or the catechism here says that we should love the truth. Uh, have you ever thought of making that statement? I love the truth. Now, Initially, when you say I love the truth, you’re probably meaning you love the Bible. The Bible is the truth, right? It’s the truth of God. That’s a good way to mean it. But I love the truth.
We are living in a world where all these voices through television, internet, social media, whatever, are coming at us, and they are trying to persuade us to a position. And it’s very interesting. There are a couple of slights of hand out in culture. There’s the definition that we call a persuasive definition. Instead of calling abortion what it really is, we call it women’s reproductive rights. Okay, that’s a persuasive definition. Are you for or against women’s reproductive health? Well, of course you’re for it, right? Who’s against that? But you gotta ask, what do they mean by it?
And then there’s the, um, you know, the sleight of hand where they use a term or a word in one way. And by the end of their argument, they’re using it in a whole different way. That was the, the method of the liberals a hundred years ago, uh, during the neo orthodoxy era, they would say, Oh yes, we believe in the inerrancy of scripture, but. we don’t believe that it means what you think it means. We hear that in politics, is it equivocation? Is that the right word? They use a word one way, and then they turn around and use it a whole different way, and it’s meant, and on and on we could go evaluating language.
Every kind of lying, every kind of deceit, it’s the work of the devil. In court and in everywhere, we should love the truth. When we hear falsehood, it should, It should shake us, it should anger us. Remember we talked several weeks back about the taking of God’s name in vain and how we should shudder, we should have a moment of righteous anger and perhaps we should as well because we love the truth and we hear falsehood all around us.
Think about love of truth. What does 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter say? Love is patient, love is kind, all the rest. And it says love, believes all things and hopes in all things. Love loves the truth. Love delights in truthhood and not falsehood. Love delights in what is right and good and true and beautiful.
And so we should speak it, it says, candidly and speak it openly. We shouldn’t be pleading the fifth. I mean, I guess you can, it’s your right when it’s necessary. 180 times if you need to. But we should be open with the truth. We should be forthcoming with the truth. We should acknowledge it. We should not hedge our bets or get people to sign a waiver. We should openly give it. And then finally it says, I should do what I can to defend and advance my neighbor’s honor and reputation. Remember in the Old Testament, how names mean everything. Adam means dust. Adam was from the dust. His name simply means dust.
Remember Eve was the mother of all living beings. She was the first mother of mankind. And from Eve, not only comes Cain and Abel and Seth and all the others down the line, but even comes the Christ child. And so their names are wonderful. Remember Abraham. Was Abram father changed to Abraham, the father of many Sarah was Sarah and then became Sarah. And so these name changes are significant. Uh, good name changes. Remember Jacob grasping Esau’s heel. He was the cheat. Uh, he became Israel, Jacob to Israel, or how about in the story of David on his way to the throne?
Uh, he is out with his mighty men and they pass by a farm and ask for something to eat. And the man of the farm, Nabal, says, no way, keep away. And Abigail, who becomes David’s wife, says, you know, he’s just a, he’s just an idiot husband. You come on and we’ll cook a cow and, you know, you’ll get some of the wine from the wineskins and all the rest. Well, remember what Nabal means, fool.
And so our name, our reputation, is something that we should hold dear and we should both work ourselves to keep and maintain, but also we should work and strive to maintain others’ names. Today, one of our visitors was Steve. Steve is the guy who does our heating and air conditioning at the church, and he just went out on his own, started a new business, and he asked me a couple months ago, would you do a Google review? And I laughed. I said, boy, will I ever. I could really get you good.
But isn’t it wonderful to be able to write a good Google review for someone that you know who’s in business? They’re honest. They’re fair. They show up on time. They do what they tell you they will do. And on and on. That’s a wonderful thing to be able to participate in.
I know sometimes we get on these Google reviews and, you know, I had dirty utensils and whatever. I don’t know if that’s even worth the time. Just don’t eat there again, maybe. But you see these negative reviews and you think, who are these people and what kind of free time do they have to be yelping restaurants and saying hateful things? Anyway, but we should be careful to defend and advance our neighbor’s honor and reputation.
If you read through the story of Jesus, and his last week on earth. You read through the story of Passover with the disciples. You read through the garden of prayer and how the disciples all snored and snoozed. And then Judah’s betrayal, the people come with clubs and they take Jesus away. He spends the night in a holding cell.
And the next morning, when they can gather the Sanhedrin, you can imagine they had been working all night all night to find people like Judas willing to betray Jesus, people willing to come and be false witnesses. And that trial of Jesus before the Jews, that trial of Jesus where he should have had the most fair shake of justice, the scriptures tell us it was full of false witnesses. And finally, two false witnesses came and said, he’s gonna tear down the temple. and he’s gonna rebuild it in three days.
Well, of course that was blasphemy. That was, you know, the terrible awful that could not be committed. And so our savior was taken to the Romans and we know the rest of the story. We say it in our creed, he was crucified under Pontius Pilate. And it was not a matter of justice. It was not a matter of truth.
It was the father of lies. And you know, the father of lies had to think all the way back to the garden when God took away his legs and he no longer crawled, he had to slither. And he had to remember, God said there will be a fight between me and between Eve’s baby. Now who knows if he knew exactly who Jesus was, I suppose he did.
Now’s my chance, I’ve got him, got him where I want him. And when he went into the grave, he was dead. He was buried. It lasted a day or two or three. Can’t you imagine Satan thinking, boy, I got him. Those lies, those trickeries really worked. And it’s a good reminder because we know the rest of the story. We know the truth of the resurrection. Truth always triumphs. It may not end this life. It may not in this life.
You may swear to your own hurt, as we’ll sing in a moment or two from Psalm 15. You may be the most honorable person, but it hurts to live in the midst of liars. That’s why in the Psalms of Ascent, in the early Psalms of Ascent, the writer says, woe to me that I live in Meshach. Woe to me that I dwell really, really, really far away from Jerusalem. Near Jerusalem or in God’s house is wonderful, but out in the world, out in the dark and dying, crooked and depraved generation is hard.
But we take encouragement that truth will prevail. But may we be willing partners in that. Let’s do ask for God’s blessing. Father, we thank you for the chance to think about our words, our lips, our witness, our testimony. And for sure we are in horror of what has passed from our hearts and through our brains and out the door of our mouths. Words are hard to take back, but we thank you that you are the one who can touch our lips like you did to Isaiah. You can cleanse them. And so forgive us of our loose lips. Forgive us of our false words. May we walk from this place tonight, people of integrity, people of honesty, not only concerned about truth, but the truth about others. And so help us, we pray in the name of Christ. Amen.